A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

ORIGINAL: Simons Foundation

By: Natalie Wolchover
September 17, 2013

Artist’s rendering of the amplituhedron, a newly discovered mathematical object resembling a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated — the probabilities of outcomes of particle interactions. . Illustration by Andy Gilmore

Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

“This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work.

The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.

“The degree of efficiency is mind-boggling,” said Jacob Bourjaily, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University and one of the researchers who developed the new idea. “You can easily do, on paper, computations that were infeasible even with a computer before.”

The new geometric version of quantum field theory could also facilitate the search for a theory of quantum gravity that would seamlessly connect the large- and small-scale pictures of the universe. Attempts thus far to incorporate gravity into the laws of physics at the quantum scale have run up against nonsensical infinities and deep paradoxes. The amplituhedron, or a similar geometric object, could help by removing two deeply rooted principles of physics: locality and unitarity.

“Both are hard-wired in the usual way we think about things,” said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and the lead author of the new work, which he is presenting in talks and in a forthcoming paper. “Both are suspect.”

Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature.

In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel’s geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct.

“It’s a better formulation that makes you think about everything in a completely different way,” said David Skinner, a theoretical physicist at Cambridge University.

The amplituhedron itself does not describe gravity. But Arkani-Hamed and his collaborators think there might be a related geometric object that does. Its properties would make it clear why particles appear to exist, and why they appear to move in three dimensions of space and to change over time.

Because “we know that ultimately, we need to find a theory that doesn’t have” unitarity and locality, Bourjaily said, “it’s a starting point to ultimately describing a quantum theory of gravity.”

Clunky Machinery

The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, “scattering amplitudes,” which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding. These numbers are what particle physicists calculate and test to high precision at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

United States Postal Service

The iconic 20th century physicist Richard Feynman invented a method for calculating probabilities of particle interactions using depictions of all the different ways an interaction could occur. Examples of “Feynman diagrams” were included on a 2005 postage stamp honoring Feynman.

The 60-year-old method for calculating scattering amplitudes — a major innovation at the time — was pioneered by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. He sketched line drawings of all the ways a scattering process could occur and then summed the likelihoods of the different drawings. The simplest Feynman diagrams look like trees: The particles involved in a collision come together like roots, and the particles that result shoot out like branches. More complicated diagrams have loops, where colliding particles turn into unobservable “virtual particles” that interact with each other before branching out as real final products. There are diagrams with one loop, two loops, three loops and so on — increasingly baroque iterations of the scattering process that contribute progressively less to its total amplitude. Virtual particles are never observed in nature, but they were considered mathematically necessary for unitarity — the requirement that probabilities sum to one.

Jacob Barnett, 14-Year-Old With Asperger's Syndrome, May Be Smarter Than Einstein

ORIGINAL: Huffington Post 

05/13/2013

"Forget What You Know" - Jacob Barnett.
"Stop Learning, Start Thinking and then Start Creating."

When Jacob Barnett was 2 years old, he was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. Doctors told his parents that the boy would likely never talk or read and would probably be forever unable to independently manage basic daily activities like tying his shoe laces.

But they were sorely, extraordinarily mistaken.

Today, Barnett -- now 14 -- is a Master's student, on his way to earning a PhD in quantum physics. According to the BBC, the teen, who boasts an IQ of 170, has already been tipped to one day win the Nobel Prize.

Since enrolling at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) at the age of 10, Barnett has flourished -- astounding his professors, peers and family with his spectacular intelligence.

The teen tutors other college students in subjects like calculus and is a published scientific researcher, with an IQ that is believed to be higher than that of Albert Einstein. In fact, according to a 2011 TIME report, Barnett, who frequently tops his college classes, has asserted that he may one day disprove Einstein's Theory of Relativity. (Watch him explain his genius to 60 minutes' Morley Safer in a 2012 interview in the video above.)

Outside of his rigorous university commitments, Barnett, who has Asperger's Syndrome, is also an entrepreneur and aspiring author.

The teen, who, with his family, runs a charity called Jacob's Place for kids on the spectrum, has used his story to raise awareness and dispel myths about autism.

"I'm not supposed to be here at all," he said last year during a TEDx Teen speech about "forgetting what you know" in New York City. "You know, I was told that I wouldn't talk. There's probably a therapist watching who is freaking out right now."

Though he makes it all look so easy, his mother, Kristine Barnett, says that he has to work hard on a daily basis to handle his autism.

"He overcomes it every day. There are things he knows about himself that he regulates everyday," his mother told the Indianapolis Star last month.

In April, Kristine Barnett's memoir about her family's experience with autism, "The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius," was released. A movie deal is said to be in the works.

"I hope it really inspires children to actually be doing something," Barnett told the Star of his mom's book and potential film. "[I hope it] encourages them to do what they like doing. I just hope it is inspirational."

Jacob Barnett is an American math and science prodigy who overcame autism and began attending college classes at age 8. He is currently 13 and is a published researcher. In this lecture Jacob teaches some basic techniques from calculus on a "back of the house calculation". Jacob's origional theories in the field of astrophysics have been considered ground breaking and to have wide implications for math and science. These theories were developed at age 9 and 10. Jacob also has a charity at www.myjacobsplace.org

For more on Jacob Barnett, watch this March 2013 YouTube video of him working through what is described as "a simple quantum mechanics problem":

Quantum computing: The next information revolution

ORIGINAL: AAAS
Author: Freelance Writer Brad Hooker
November 16, 2012

An artist's conception of an array of spin qubits based on subatomic nuclear memory. (Illustration by Peter Allen, courtesy of David Awschalom, UCSB)

Curiosity drives humanity. When confronted with a new phenomenon, we are compelled to search for understanding. We can then control the science with new technologies, making life easier. This, says AAAS fellow Raymond Laflamme, grants us time to be curious.

In the rapidly evolving field of quantum computing, curiosity over the last hundred years has driven scientists to the brink of controlling this once exotic world.

Quantum computers, with the capacity to complete in an instant calculations that a classical computer with all the time and energy in the universe could never solve, will propel the next information revolution. Yet the concept of quantum computing is young and, so far, no scientist can predict with certainty when that revolution will occur.

For one AAAS fellow and his team of researchers, the missing tool to jump-start this revolution may be found in diamonds.

The subatomic ocean

Observations and theories in quantum mechanics have led to stories of subatomic particles breaking all known laws of classical physics, essentially walking through walls, teleporting across vast distances and traveling back in time.

Quantum particles can occupy two states at the same time. Incredibly sensitive, their characteristics change in the simple process of observing them. Yet in measuring the interactions of particles with higher mass, experimenters can calculate minute energy fluctuations, allowing a better understanding of this quantum soup.

“Quantum mechanics tells you that the quantum [computing] bit or the quantum coin can be both tails and heads at the same time. And this is really changing how the world works,” says Laflamme, the executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing.

An early scientist to envision a computing system to harness the nature of quantum physics, Richard Feynman, a renowned physicist and mathematician, suggested in 1982 that the strange ability of quantum particles to occupy multiple states—known as superposition—would theoretically allow for parallel calculations. The idea presented a method far more efficient for solving certain problems than the linear factoring system of classical computing that is based on 1s and 0s.

“We already have the technology to harness a small part of the quantum world. That’s what lasers are and that’s what magnetic resonance imaging is,” says Laflamme. “We want to go further than this and there’s quite a big ocean. So now that we have dipped our big toe in the water of the ocean of the quantum world, we try to go deeper.”

Yet this pursuit has been obstructed by defects found in the nanostructures of traditional computers – imperfections magnified exponentially on the quantum scale. This led physicists in the field to scoff at the idea of being able to contain and control these particles.

In five years – a comparative leap in the long history of quantum research – that thinking changed.

“So all of the work culminated in roughly the year 2000 in what is called the accuracy threshold theory,” says Laflamme. “In other words, it says that in principal imprecision and imperfection of a realistic device can be controlled.”

And with control came new technologies.

One in a sea of particles

Every two years the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles, according to the famous observation known as Moore’s Law. In shrinking the size of transistors, processor manufacturers can fit more computing power into a smaller space, enabling new technologies like smart phones and ultralight laptops. Yet these electron transistors can only be so small before fans can no longer cool them. The end result is overheating and melting.

“Most of the world of technology has really focused on making very clean and perfect types of material of nanostructures,” says University of California, Santa Barbara physicist and AAAS Fellow David Awschalom. “Oddly enough it’s the defects in certain materials that can very strongly attract one electron and hold it there in a very convenient way.”

One such material is diamonds.
Rather than being plucked from the earth, this type of diamond is synthesized in a lab: chemical vapors deposit single crystal fillings to make a strand large enough to be applied in experiments.

The defects in the diamonds – the missing atoms – trap the electrons, allowing Awschalom and his team to study these particles and the interference on their spins that is created by other particles, by other spins, by molecules and a number of other interactions. The scientists can also manipulate the spin of the particle using ultra high frequency circuits.

The spin direction, in this way, counts as a point of memory. Through superposition, multiple points of memory can be recorded. Each of these particles represents a single quantum bit, or qubit. By lining up about 20 to 50 qubits, scientists can perform searching and sorting algorithms – the equivalent of matching a single phone number in a New York City phone book.

“What’s been interesting about systems like diamonds is that all of these physics and dynamics work on the desktop,” says Awschalom in explaining how this material eliminates the need for supercooling. “So it’s made very accessible to a lot of scientists, including ourselves.”

Beyond the information horizon

In 1994, Laflamme faced a growing concern in the field he studied then, quantum cosmology. How could you factor in the distribution of the universe when so much quantum noise is interfering with every interaction of every particle? Quantum computing, as it turned out, was dealing with the same hurdle. To better understand this issue, Laflamme’s mentor sent him to a conference that year on quantum computing. As it turns out, this became the catalyst for Laflamme’s sudden emergence into this growing field.

The speaker, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was Peter Shor.

“This is a mathematician who proved that in principle a computer based on the laws of quantum physics could factor large numbers, which is the basis of all our cryptography,” says AAAS Fellow Steve Rolston, co-director of the University of Maryland’s Joint Quantum Institute.

Shor’s algorithm predicted that a quantum computer could find all the prime factors of a given integer and it could do it far faster than a classical computer ever could. Over night the encryption method for banking systems, online shopping and myriad other code-based networks, became immensely vulnerable. The fact that it was impossible to factor large numbers in this way now stood in doubt.

“Suddenly the attention came to the NSA (National Security Agency),” recalls LaFlamme. “And then they started to say, ‘Is that really true? Is that guy Peter Shor a crank or is he a real scientist?’” If all the encryption the intelligence agency has been using will now be in jeopardy, he says, they want to know when it will happen – when a functioning quantum computer will be built.

With the subsequent boon in funding for quantum research, scientists from an assortment of fields grew fascinated with this emerging science.

“You always hear people talk about interdisciplinary things all the time and sometimes it’s just a buzz word,” says Rolston. “But here it’s really true – physicists of varying types, computer scientists and mathematicians. It’s intellectually stimulating.”

The field is now redefining what information is and how it will be delivered.

“The information revolution was really a quantum revolution because all our electronics are based on the laws of quantum mechanics, the semiconductors, the transistors, etc.,” says Rolston. “So now what we’re trying to do is see if we can’t do that again, but using those other aspects of quantum mechanics that haven’t been exploited so far. The sky’s the limit in some sense.”

The first likely technology to result from the manipulation of sensitive quantum states will be sensors. In fields like chemistry and biology this could lead to extraordinary advances in imaging the nuclear structure of proteins, changing the way pharmaceuticals are designed.

In time, a machine to capture the immense information capacities of the mysterious quantum frontier may one day fit inside a shirt pocket and will enable humanity to build technologies that top scientists in the field have yet to dream up.

“Once we have quantum computers we’ll have harnessed the quantum world,” says Laflamme. “We’ll be swimming in it in kind of a backstroke. Anything we want to do we’ll be able to do it. It’s our holy grail, quantum computing.”

Related Links:
Raymond Laflamme and the potential of quantum computers

Scientists Confirm D-Wave's Computer Chips Compute Using Quantum Mechanics

ORIGINAL: IEEE Spectrum
By Jeremy Hsu
Posted 3 Jul 2013 | 18:05 GMT

Photo: Steve Cohn/USC News

A strategy of "show, don't tell" for quantum computing seems to be paying off for Canadian company D-Wave. The latest validation for D-Wave's quantum computer claims comes from a paper published in the June 28 edition of the journal Nature Communications.

Testing of the D-Wave chip—housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center—suggested that the device does use quantum mechanics to solve optimization problems. Once quantum computers scale up to have enough processing power, they could prove much faster than classical computers in tackling certain problems, according to the new paper.

"Our work seems to show that, from a purely physical point of view, quantum effects play a functional role in information processing in the D-Wave processor," says Sergio Boixo, a researcher who led the study while he was a research assistant professor in computer science at the University of Southern California, in a press release.

Most research labs have only succeeded in building quantum computing processors with just a few quantum bits (qubits). Unlike classical computing bits that exist as either a 1 or 0, qubits can exist in multiple states at the same time due to the strange rules of quantum physics that dominate reality at very small scales.

That's why D-Wave initially drew skepticism for claiming to have built quantum processors with hundreds of qubits. But rather than follow research labs in trying to build general-purpose quantum computers, D-Wave has developed specialized quantum annealing devices for solving optimization problems.

The Canadian company has slowly won over some critics by giving independent researchers access to its D-Wave machines and inviting them to test its claims. One such test revealed that D-Wave machines could already beat classical computers in solving certain optimization problems.

D-Wave has also attracted notable tech giants as its first commercial customers. The company made its first commercial sale to Lockheed Martin in 2011, and has sold a second chip to Google for future installation at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Members of the University of California team previously published a paper about D-Wave's quantum computing device on the arXiv preprint server in April. Their new paper in Nature Communications—a test of a D-Wave "Rainier" chip with 108 functional qubits—may give former skeptics fresh hope that quantum computing has, in fact, become a reality.

The USC team has barely paused for breath in its race to study quantum computing. USC's Quantum Computing Center received an upgrade to a new 512-qubit "Vesuvius" chip two months ago—the next machine up for a test drive.

Michio Kaku: The Biotechnology Revolution

ORIGINAL: BBC
Sep 11, 2012

Professor Michio Kaku, famous Theoretical Physicist and one of the inventors of Light Cone String Field Theory (one of the Relativistic forms of M-Theory), hosts a documentary on the use of the body of scientific knowledge on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology that will lead to "The Biotech Revolution".

In this documentary, Michio Kaku explores the the emerging field of advanced Biotechnology and how by combining our knowledge of physics and engineering with the vast knowledge of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Physiology, Neurobiology and Zoology we can influence regenerative processes in the body, fight disease and even cure some of the most pervasive and destructive diseases facing us today.

By working together in a common goal, Biologists and Computer Scientists can successfully map entire genomes, as they have done in the initial Human Genome Project, and locate genes that code for specific amino acid chains, leading to peptides and proteins.

By using this knowledge, Chemists, Biologists and Physicists are all planning to generate active biotechnology that could, perhaps in our lifetime, act semi-autonomously and fight disease on the cellular level by delivering mechanically driven medication to an active site in the body of living organisms.

By engineering entire chemistry labs on microchips, scanning for disease could take on a form seen only in science fiction and requiring only a innovation in our existing knowledge to design such devices.

The power that we have achieved in organic and inorganic chemistry and in manufacturing nanoscale materials could mean that we may be fighting disease on a molecular level soon enough, eliminating the threat of growing strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

By studying the genome of bacteria at such levels we may be able to make tailor made antibiotics for individual people on the space of a few hours, taking over the rate at which bacteria naturally evolve resistance.

Using quantum mechanics it may also be possible to record the behaviour of bacteria themselves, using surface plasmonics to observe the formation of germ capsules or bacterial membranes, and being able to test medicine not carelessly on animals but on the germs themselves.

This could be the beginning of a Biomedical Renaissance.

New results indicate that particle discovered at CERN is a Higgs boson

ORIGINAL: CERN / CMS

Candidate events in the CMS SM Higgs Search. CMS, 13 May 2012, 21.08.
A typical candidate event including two high-energy photons.

HIG-13-002 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of Z bosons, one of which subsequently decays to a pair of electrons (green lines and green towers) and the other Z decays to a pair of muons (red lines). The event could also be due to known Standard Model background processes. Image 1 of 16. HIG-13-002 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of Z bosons, one of which subsequently decays to a pair of electrons (green lines and green towers) and the other Z decays to a pair of muons (red lines). The event could also be due to known Standard Model background processes. Image: CERN, CMS

Geneva, 14 March 2013. At the Moriond Conference today, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results that further elucidate the particle discovered last year. Having analysed two and a half times more data than was available for the discovery announcement in July, they find that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs boson of the Standard Model of particle physics, or possibly the lightest of several bosons predicted in some theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Finding the answer to this question will take time. 

Whether or not it is a Higgs boson is demonstrated by how it interacts with other particles, and its quantum properties. For example, a Higgs boson is postulated to have no spin, and in the Standard Model its parity – a measure of how its mirror image behaves – should be positive. CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and positive parity. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson. 

“The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is.” said CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela. 

"The beautiful new results represent a huge effort by many dedicated people. They point to the new particle having the spin-parity of a Higgs boson as in the Standard Model. We are now well started on the measurement programme in the Higgs sector," said ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton. 

Image 4 of 16. HIG-13-004 Event 1: Event recorded with the CMS detector in 2012 at a proton-proton centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of τ leptons. Such an event is characterised by the production of two forward-going jets, seen here in opposite endcaps. One of the τs decays to a muon (red lines on the right) and neutrinos, while the other τ decays into a charged hadron and a neutrino

To determine if this is the Standard Model Higgs boson, the collaborations have, for example, to measure precisely the rate at which the boson decays into other particles and compare the results to the predictions. The detection of the boson is a very rare event - it takes around 1 trillion (1012) proton-proton collisions for each observed event. To characterize all of the decay modes will require much more data from the LHC. 

Footnote(s): 

1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its member states are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Cyprus, Israel and Serbia are associate members in the pre-stage to membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have observer status.

Uncertainty Principle

ORIGINAL: The Big View

At a time when Einstein had gained international recognition, quantum theory culminated in the late 1920’s statement of the Uncertainty Principle, which says that the more precisely the position of a particle is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. The above phrasing of the principle is a succinct version of the mathematically precise uncertainty relation that Heisenberg published in 1927. Since the momentum of a particle is the product of its mass and velocity, the principle is sometimes stated differently, however, its meaning remains the same: The act of measuring one magnitude of a particle, be it its mass, its velocity, or its position, causes the other magnitudes to blur. This is not due to imprecise measurements. Technology is advanced enough to hypothetically yield correct measurements. The blurring of these magnitudes is a fundamental property of nature.

Click on this button to hear Heisenberg explaining his uncertainty principle. (.au, 176 kb)

The uncertainty relation describes the "blur" between the measurable quantities of a particle in mathematical terms. Like much of the math in quantum theory, it is not for the faint of heart, which is to say it is completely unintelligible to most people. Therefore we restrict ourselves to a brief account on the underlying ideas and how they developed into the "Copenhagen Interpretation", which Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg jointly elaborated as a complete and consistent view of quantum mechanics (the Copenhagen Interpretation refers to Bohr's place of birth).

Heisenberg: "What Schrödinger writes about the visualisability of his theory [...] is crap."

Around 1925 there were two competing mathematical theories that both attempted to explain electron orbits. Matrix mechanics developed by Heisenberg interprets the electron as a particle with quantum behaviour. It is based on sophisticated matrix computations, which introduce discontinuities and quantum jumps. In contrast, wave mechanics developed by Erwin Schrödinger interprets the electron as an energy wave. Because wave mechanics entails more familiar concepts and equations, it quickly gained popularity among scientists.

Schrödinger and Heisenberg were no too fond of each other's competing works. Schrödinger says about matrix mechanics: "I knew of [Heisenberg's] theory, of course, but I felt discouraged, not to say repelled, by the methods of transcendental algebra, which appeared difficult to me, and by the lack of visualisability." Heisenberg's comment on wave mechanics was: "The more I think about the physical portion of Schrödinger's theory, the more repulsive I find it. [...] What Schrödinger writes about the visualisability of his theory 'is probably not quite right,' in other words it's crap."

The Copenhagen Interpretation.

Despite the differences, Schrödinger published a proof in 1926, which showed that the results of matrix and wave mechanics are equivalent; they were in fact the same theory. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the wave and particle pictures of the atom, or the visual and causal representations, are "complementary" to each other. That is, they are mutually exclusive, yet jointly essential for a complete description of quantum events. Obviously in an experiment in the everyday world an object cannot be both a wave and a particle at the same time; it must be either one or the other, depending on the situation. In later refinements of this interpretation, the wave function of the unobserved object is a mixture of both, the wave and particle pictures, until the experimenter chooses what to observe in a given experiment.

The German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932 for his work in nuclear physics and quantum theory. The paper on the uncertainty relation is his most important contribution to physics.

Werner Heisenberg

Heisenberg impressed his teachers with his ambition and brilliance. He never produced other grades than straight A's, except on one occasion: During his doctorate, professor Wien of the university of Munich gave him an F in experimental physics, because he handled the laboratory equipment clumsily. Reportedly this left Heisenberg so disconcerted that he did not speak to anyone for days. 

Fate had it that a few years later, Heisenberg demonstrated the very limitations of experimental physics, which unquestionably constituted a setback for its advocates, including Professor Wien.

The observer becomes part of the observed system.

The notion of the observer becoming a part of the observed system is fundamentally new in physics. In quantum physics, the observer is no longer external and neutral, but through the act of measurement he becomes himself a part of observed reality. This marks the end of the neutrality of the experimenter. It also has huge implications on the epistemology of science: certain facts are no longer objectifiable in quantum theory. If in an exact science, such as physics, the outcome of an experiment depends on the view of the observer, then what does this imply for other fields of human knowledge? It would seem that in any faculty of science, there are different interpretations of the same phenomena. More often than occasionally, these interpretations are in conflict with each other. Does this mean that ultimate truth is unknowable?

The results of quantum theory, and particularly of Heisenberg's work, left scientists puzzled. Many felt that quantum theory had somehow "missed the point". At least Albert Einstein did so. He was an outspoken critic of quantum mechanics and is often quoted on his comment regarding the Uncertainty Principle: "The Old One (God) doesn't play dice." He also said: "I like to believe that the moon is still there even if we don't look at it." In particular, Einstein was convinced that electrons do have definite orbits, even if we cannot observe them. In a conversation with Heisenberg he said:

A conversation between Einstein and Heisenberg.

Heisenberg: "One cannot observe the electron orbits inside the atom. [...] but since it is reasonable to consider only those quantities in a theory that can be measured, it seemed natural to me to introduce them only as entities, as representatives of electron orbits, so to speak."

Einstein: "But you don't seriously believe that only observable quantities should be considered in a physical theory?"

"I thought this was the very idea that your Relativity Theory is based on?" Heisenberg asked in surprise.

"Perhaps I used this kind of reasoning," replied Einstein, "but it is nonsense nevertheless. [...] In reality the opposite is true: only the theory decides what can be observed."

(translated from "Der Teil und das Ganze" by W. Heisenberg)

We can easily see the rift between Einstein's intuitive and Heisenberg's empirical approach. Although Einstein's argumentation appears tricky, it is clear that he believes in a reality independent of what we can observe, which is in essence the view of realism. Kant's "thing in itself" comes to mind. - In contrast, Heisenberg believes that reality is what can be observed. If there are different observations, there must be different realities, which depend on the observer. Insofar Heisenberg can be regarded as an advocate of philosophical idealism, which states that the objects of perception are identical with the ideas we have about them. The idealist view denies that any particular thing has an independent real essence outside of consciousness.

On early Earth, iron may have performed magnesium's RNA folding job

ORIGINAL: eScienceNews

May 31, 2012

Loren Williams, professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, used experiments and numerical calculations to show that in plausible early earth conditions, iron can substitute for magnesium in RNA binding, folding and catalysis. Georgia Tech/Gary Meek.

Jessica Bowman (left) and Loren Williams from the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry assess a gel showing that RNA is not degraded by iron if oxygen is omitted. Based on these results, Williams hypothesizes that RNA evolved on the early earth in the presence of iron and is optimized to work with iron. Georgia Tech/Gary Meek.

Georgia Tech biology postdoctoral fellow Shreyas Athavale (left) and chemistry and biochemistry professor Loren Williams look at a gel showing the products of a ribozyme reaction that was run with iron instead of magnesium. Under identical anaerobic conditions, the activity of two enzymes was enhanced in the presence of iron, compared to their activity in the presence of magnesium . Georgia Tech/Gary Meek  .

On the periodic table of the elements, iron and magnesium are far apart. But new evidence suggests that 3 billion years ago, iron did the chemical work now done by magnesium in helping RNA fold and function properly. There is considerable evidence that the evolution of life passed through an early stage when RNA played a more central role before DNA and coded proteins appeared. During that time, more than 3 billion years ago, the environment lacked oxygen but had an abundance of soluble iron.

In a new study, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology used experiments and numerical calculations to show that iron, in the absence of oxygen, can substitute for magnesium in RNA binding, folding and catalysis. The researchers found that RNA's shape and folding structure remained the same and its functional activity increased when magnesium was replaced by iron in an oxygen-free environment.

"The primary motivation of this work was to understand RNA in plausible early earth conditions and we found that iron could support an array of RNA structures and catalytic functions more diverse than RNA with magnesium," said Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech.

The results of the study were published online on May 31, 2012 in the journal PLoS ONE. The study was supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

In addition to Williams, Georgia Tech School of Biology postdoctoral fellow Shreyas Athavale, research scientist Anton Petrov, and professors Roger Wartell and Stephen Harvey, and Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry postdoctoral fellow Chiaolong Hsiao and professor Nicholas Hud also contributed to this work.

Free oxygen gas was almost nonexistent more than 3 billion years ago in the early earth's atmosphere. When oxygen began entering the environment as a product of photosynthesis, it turned the earth's iron to rust, forming massive banded iron formations that are still mined today. The free oxygen produced by advanced organisms caused iron to be toxic, even though it was -- and still is -- a requirement for life.

This environmental transition triggered by the introduction of free oxygen into the atmosphere would have caused a slow, but dramatic, shift in biology that required transformations in biochemical mechanisms and metabolic pathways. The current study provides evidence that this transition may have caused a shift from iron to magnesium for RNA binding, folding and catalysis processes.

The researchers used quantum mechanical calculations, chemical footprinting and two ribozyme assays to determine that in an oxygen-free environment, iron, Fe2+, can be substituted for magnesium, Mg2+, in RNA folding and catalysis.

Quantum mechanical calculations showed that the structure of RNA was nearly identical when it included iron or magnesium. When large RNAs fold into native, stable structures, negatively charged phosphate groups are brought into close proximity. The researchers calculated one small difference between the activity of iron and magnesium structures: more charge was transferred from phosphate to iron than from phosphate to magnesium.

Chemical probing under anaerobic conditions showed that iron could replace magnesium in compacting and folding large RNA structures, thus providing evidence that iron and magnesium could be nearly interchangeable in their interactions with RNA.

Under identical anaerobic conditions, the activity of two enzymes was enhanced in the presence of iron, compared to their activity in the presence of magnesium. The initial activity of the L1 ribozyme ligase, an enzyme that glues together pieces of RNA, was 25 times higher in the presence of iron. Activity of the hammerhead ribozyme, an enzyme that cuts RNA, was three times higher in the presence of iron compared to magnesium.

"The results suggest that iron is a superior substitute for magnesium in these catalytic roles," said Williams, who is also director of the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution at Georgia Tech. "Our hypothesis is that RNA evolved in the presence of iron and is optimized to work with iron."

In future studies, the researchers plan to investigate what unique functions RNA can possess with iron that are not possible with magnesium.

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology Research News